Margolotta's Thud Game
by Estelle Tiniwiel
Summary: Lady Margolotta reflects.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: I don't own these characters or the Thud game, they belong to Pratchett, I'm just borrowing them.**

**This is a little thing I wrote a while back. It's not going anywhere at the moment, but it may be continued at a later date if any inspiration hits. Little plot but hope you like it anyway.**

Margolotta sighed and swept the pieces from the board. No matter which side Havelock played, dwarf or troll, he almost always seemed to win. On the rare occasions that he didn't win, Margolotta could think of only three possibilities as to why.

i) He had a lot on his mind with that monster of a city and had more important things to attend to, thus deliberately allowing his game to slip.

ii) He had not been able to anticipate her move and had made genuine mistakes; after all, not even he could be perfect.

iii) He was in a good mood and feeling benevolent and had allowed her to win.

However much she tried to convince herself that it was the first or second she never quite succeeded. The first just didn't fit the man's nature: if he was having a hard time he would use every available opportunity to sharpen his skills. The second… well, the second she did believe, in the real world – but not within the limits imposed by the physical restraints of a game board. There were too few options.

That only left the third.

It came to be quite depressing, it really did. Centuries older than him and still he could run political rings around her and tie her mind in knots. Letting her win was like a father telling his child that it's not the winning that counts it's the taking part, when the child knows very well that the winning is the only thing that counts and that what her father has told her is a complete load of horse dung. He really was a most vexing man.


	2. Chapter 2

**WARNING: CONTAINS PRETTY HUGE SPOILERS FOR UNSEEN ACADEMICALS!!! So if you haven't read that yet, don't read this unless you want a lot of the fun leached out of it. You have been warned.**

_Any flames given (not that I've ever received any before, you all seem to be a pretty lovely lot) as a result of my having revealed spoilers will therefore be laughed at and used to heat my rather chilly student flat, what with the radiator's being broken again._

_Other than that, I hope you enjoy it. Am snowed under with Uni work at the moment so unfortunately this is all the fanfiction I can manage at the moment, so I apologise for its brevity._

_Much love,_

_Estelle Tiniwiel –x-_

Margolotta had arrived back at her castle on its windy hill some time previously that evening, and had just made her way into her living room, where the candles guttered dully in their brackets. The wind howled.

"Igor! Shut the windows properly, will you? And get some decent lamps in here, too; I'm sick of those blasted black tapers you like so much, they give an awful light."

Igor gave a death rattle of a sigh, in mourning for the tradition his Lady had so carelessly disposed of so many years ago now, and bowed his head in reluctant submission.

"Yeth, mithtreth. I thall purthue it with alacrity, mithtreth."

Igor shuffled out of the room, and Lady Margolotta walked over to where a stone board stood balanced on a delicately carved little coffee table, and let her hands brush gently over the tops of the pieces.

Then she dashed them to the floor.

Damn the man! How had he done it?! _Finally_ she had thought that she had some level of leverage in Ankh-Morpork, finally she was getting some way towards being more than the ineffective bloodsucker he had so politely pointed her out to be, and he threw it back in her face! She sent an orc, an _orc_ of all creatures, to that blasted city, a creature that she could watch and manoeuvre and keep in check through his lovely attendants and the guilt that screamed inside his head, and Vetinari had countered it by making sure that the one place the orc had managed to find within all that sprawling metropolis was with the one group of people to whom bizarre species as employees was something totally normal and utterly accepted. He had made sure that the orc was not just safe, but _looked after_.

Oh, of course, there had been reasons for her sending the orc other than supplementary power, but they were all intertwined.

And Vetinari had laughed at her. Had seen the way the orc had turned out, the way that he had hoped he would (although the fact that he had laughed at all said that even he had not this time been certain), and had taken enjoyment in it.

The orc had truly broken his bonds, for the last time ever. From this point on, the chains would only ever be of his own making, and there would be no more whips, however metaphorical, laying themselves across his back.

Lady Margolotta sighed, still glaring down at the game-board, and started retrieving the pieces from where they had fallen on the carpet. And then she made the first move and sent Igor up to the clacks.

It would appear she still had a lot to learn.

**Author's Note**: _Hope you liked it, and that it doesn't clash too much with how others interpreted the situation. It know it was Margolotta that sent Nutt to AM, but I can't remember it specifically saying it was her that suggested UU (I could be wrong, I haven't got the text with me at the moment and don't have a brilliant memory, so can't check), but I personally believe that whether or not it was her or not, Vetinari definitely kept an eye on things and was aware of how things would turn out, which people would be involved, and he checked up on them. Whatever happened, I don't think that Margolotta got it all her own way._

_If anyone has truly undeniable evidence that they wish to present, which overhauls the content of this fanfiction, then please do tell me and I shall make an attempt at re-writing it._


End file.
